Video summer limb drop on eucs

[Ekka]

This large Forest Red Gum dropped a huge limb in a resort.

Check out the video, and tell me what you think, what would you do if you were the arborist, what would you advise/prescribe.

This is a relatively common event.

1.43 mins and a huge 17.4MB as it's high quality.

For those of you with slower connections hit stop on the video and allow the file to download. Once downloaded and played you can save it to your own computer.

click here to download

 

[treeseer]

imo Sudden Limb Drop is an "edge effect", occurring on limbs that have grown out into recently cleared areas. Tree risk managers should keep an eye out for these sprawlers, and recommend reduction/thinning the ends where they extend over targets. If it's too heavy make it lighter. If it's too long, make it shorter. This seems harder on eucs with their lack of interior branches.

Cabling where the target is very high value, or where pruning will not reduce the risk to an acceptable level. Whole branch removal is seldom recommended because that increases the risk of other parts of the tree.

I've seen SLD on oaks, maples, sweetgum, etc. A big red oak shed a limb over a playground. The manager kneejerkedly wanted to remove whole lower branches, but agreed to shortening the worst sprawlers. It's simply physics, the way I see it.

 

[darkstar]

trim the stub clean out some of the vines ...let mother nature do the rest it looks like the rest of the limbs are mostly hanging over dirt but i really couldnt tell .. maybe lighten some of those up a bit ..

 

[techdave]

Hi EKKA, nice vid, well worth the wait even with my whack 56k connection. I would mostly look at what is underneath to decide what to do. If there is lots of backyard BBQ, beer drinking, kids playing under it then I would radically trim. If they are almost never stationary in backyard under tree the risk is not as high. Ma-in-law has a similar tree in her backyard but its about 50 yards from the nearest structure and maybe at most 100 feet high. It will drop the occasional small limb, but has never dropped any over 4 inch at biggest. of course that will still kill you from 30 feet up, but its undeveloped underneath it, so no one ever is staying under it. Great habitat for Bubo Virginianus and Corvus brachyrhyncos. (GH owl and crows) It gets the outflow from the washing machine.

 

[Ekka]

Thanks guys

Good advice all of you. Hey Treeseer, have they done much research into the predictability of SLD?

What always amazes me is how the whole limb pops off. You know what I mean, how many times if you're up a tree removing a limb and half cut thru it ... it either hangs there and you have to cut it more or it tears a great wad of bark off ... but these SLD's just go, wholus bolus... wierd.

That's pretty much what I recommended and priced but they didn't go for it and just left it as is! Oh well, not my problem.

 

[treeseer]

have they done much research into the predictability of SLD?
That's pretty much what I recommended and priced but they didn't go for it .

The phenomenon's been tied to rapid moisture fluctuation within the branch. No hard data on predictablity, so preventing it by pruning can be a hard sell, like you said.

Heavy ends after rapid growth into a cleared area and over a target => lighten up the ends. The sense behind that strategy can't get any more common. Some clients see the logic, some don't. Some may be held back due to the notion that reduction cuts = topping = The Devil, put out by the Flat Earth Society I think. :alien: